This comic is a continuation of 1253: Exoplanet Names, and was published the day after NASA announced the discovery of a number of planets, including a planet called a cousin to Earth, Kepler-452b. Black Hat proposes naming it Pluto, to commemorate the flyby of the dwarf planet of that name by NASA's New Horizons earlier the same month. He admits this alternative to end the discussion about the status of Pluto, which is subject to debate among both scientists and laypeople over whether-or-not it should be considered a planet. Pluto was considered a planet for a long period of time until, in 2005, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) created a new definition for the word 'planet' designed to exclude Pluto and similar objects, resulting in much debate (The IAU is the organization that takes responsibility for naming celestial bodies like planets, stars, and much more).

It may appear that, with Black Hat's suggestion, the answer to the question "is Pluto a planet?" will therefore always be "yes", regardless of the status of the Pluto in our Solar System according to the IAU. However the same IAU official definition that excludes Pluto also states that a 'planet' has to orbit our sun, so according to the IAU, nothing in this comic is a planet (the IAU definition only allows them to be exoplanets, which, like dwarf planets, are not planets). Hence, the debate indeed becomes 'a little more confusing'. This is in line with Black Hat's characterisation as a mischief-maker.

The title text is referring to the planet name entry Netherlands VI for the star EPIC 201912552. Randall thus continues his references to the Dutch people taking over the world and then the universe after the earth's oceans has been drained and transported to Mars. This happens in two consecutive What if?'s, Drain the Oceans and Drain the Oceans: Part II, was referenced in Dropping a Mountain, and was referenced again the week before this comic in 1551: Pluto. Due to a drain in the Earth's ocean the Netherlands does not have to worry about getting flooded anymore and since it now does not have to use all its resources preventing floods, it can use these to conquer the world (including Antarctica becoming South Netherlands). Then it takes on Mars (which becomes New Netherlands), and then a section of Pluto (again calling it New Netherlands). There is also a possible reference to 1519: Venus, but that comic has no direct relation to the conquests of the Dutch people like in the other three references. It should be mentioned, that New Netherland was actually a Dutch colony with New York City, formerly known as New Amsterdam, as its capital. So the name "New Netherlands" is "historically correct", while "Netherlands VI" isn't.

In the title text Randall mentioned that he will continue with this Netherlands joke driving it so far into the ground, (i.e. way beyond the point where it stops being funny), that they (the Dutch people) will have to build levees (or dykes) around it to keep the sea out - thus making it funny again... By forcing the Dutchmen to build new levees for this reason, the whole issue with their conquest of the world will be over before it happens.

This table explains each entry in the comic table.
The "Status" column refers to the comic 1253: Exoplanet Names, and indicates if the entry was already in that version (Old), if it is an addition since then (New) or if the entry has been updated (Update).

"A Star" is obviously a bad name for a planet. A* (pronounced "A star") is already used in astronomy, for example the Milky Way's black hole core is Sagittarius A*. "A star" is also the name for the character asterisk and the name of the popular A* search algorithm in computer science.

Mrs. Roberts is probably trying to use SQL injection like in Exploits of a Mom, in which her son Robert'); DROP TABLE students;-- caused the school a lot of trouble when his name was put in. The idea here is that the IAU would enter the name into their system and promptly lose all of their data pertaining to planets. Note that Planet e is located in the habitable zone of the star system.

VY Canis Majoris is one of the largest known stars at our galaxy and belongs to the constellation Canis Major, Latin for "greater dog". The constellation further contains Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, also called "Dog Star".

The Unicode character ☃ may be a reference to the planet's estimated surface temperature of -40 °C (-40 °F). However, this name would be pronounced differently (being a symbol, not a word or name) in different languages. Planets in our solar system are assigned to astronomical symbols like ♁ for Earth or ♂ for Mars.

This massive planet orbits a red dwarf star at the longest known period of 3416 days at this category. Many exoplanets are described as "Hot Jupiters" because they are high-temperature gas giants; if one were to read "hot" as a description of attractiveness rather than temperature, one might generate names like this one.

About 200th discovered exoplanet (in 2007); reported to be the first potentially Earth-like planet in the habitable zone of its star, though that is in doubt now. The joke might be that like "Space Planet", "Planet #14" is a generic and unoriginal name. Also note that this is the 15th entry in the original table so the numbering is zero-based.

An interesting (?) coincidence is that the 14th and 15th Minor planets (then called asteroids) were discovered in 1851; see see List of minor planets: 1–1000. If they were to be counted among the planets of the Solar System, as was sometimes done then, the 14th known planetary body would be Iris (discovered in 1847, a year before Neptune).

SkyDOT is the Sky Database for Objects in Time-Domain run by LANL for the U.S. Dept. of Energy and includes data for Epsilon Eridani that can be used to constrain the orbital parameters of ε Eri b. It may also refer to how objects in space may appear as bland, bright dots in the night sky.

A Laser does not produce noise in the signal sense; it only works at a well defined frequency. In science fiction films, however, laser weapon discharges are usually accompanied by sound. Sun-like Epsilon Eridani became a popular setting for science fiction after its publicity as a target of the Project Ozma experiment.

The mythological name Pandora fulfills most of IAU's guidelines and has been popular for planets in science fiction; most recently and famously is the venue of James Cameron's Avatar (although actually it is not a planet but just a moon of a gas giant in Alpha Centauri A). It is also a hellish planet from Frank Herbert's WorShip series of novels, a jungle planet in Brothers Strugatsky's Noon Universe and the planet used in Borderlands Games.

Most probably a pun on the rap group A$AP Mob and their most prominent member A$AP Rocky. May also be a pun on Kesha, also written as Ke$ha. In that case the c of the planet's designation would belong to the name.

Betelgeuse is a star in the constellation Orion. It is commonly (at least by speakers of English) pronounced as "beetlejuice". Beetlejuice, however is a film directed by Tim Burton from 1988. Similarly to Dune/Arrakis (see Gliese 180) and the two Uranuses (see Kepler-283), naming two planets with names that are generally regarded to be identical would cause severe confusion in astronomical discussions.

The way a Wikipedia article would be titled, for example, to distinguish from the the original novel, the first film, the Tim Burton remake and the reboot series. In each adaptation, a group of astronauts lands on what is believed to be a "Planet of the Apes", which turns out to be a post-apocalyptic Earth. A Wikipedia page for this planet would itself conflict with an existing disambiguation page, possibly requiring a second-level disambiguation page to be created.

Kepler-283

b

New

ˈjʊərənəs

Two alternative pronunciations (written in International Phonetic Alphabet) for the planet name Uranus; the first one translates as "YU-ri-nus" ("urine-us"), while the second translates as "yu-RAIN-us" ("your anus"). The first pronunciation (being the same as how the Greek god is pronounced in English) is preferred by astronomers, but both are commonly heard. Similarly to Dune/Arrakis (see Gliese 180) and Betelgeuse/Beetlejuice (see HR 7722), naming two planets with names that are generally regarded to be identical would cause severe confusion in astronomical discussions.

Taco Bell has an ad campaign adding a meal after dinner. Possibly also a reference to Hobbits and seven daily meals. This entry was misspelled Andromidae in the first comic (and also in the first released version of this one, see trivia.) Although the star was mentioned in the previous chart, this entry "b" was not. In that comic the chart was shown as a part of a list. And the b entry was above the cut-off line. So the next object was also called "c" in the previous chart.

Legoland is a chain of theme parks owned by the Lego Group. Potentially a reference to the movie The World's End, in which the protagonist Gary King tells the alien invaders to "get in your rocket and fuck off back to Legoland".

A well-characterized "Hot Jupiter" at a temperature range of 973 ± 33 K to 1,212 ± 11 K. The name refers to the feature of Permanent death common in many RPGs and roguelikes. Or may reference permafrost, which has also been discussed in the comic.

A Store brand is a line of products branded by a retailer. They have a reputation for being lower quality than other brands, and are often marketed similarly to other brands. This is implying that this is a cheaper version of Earth. (This entry replaced the completely different entry Kepler-3284b Blainsley from the previous chart).

As far as we can tell, Kepler-437b is in the vicinity of the constellation Monoceros, aka the Unicorn. (This was labeled Kepler-3255b in the previous chart)

KOI-2418

b

Old

Spherical Discworld

The Discworld is the fictional setting for British author Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of humorous fantasy novels; it consists of a large disc supported by four elephants themselves standing on top of a turtle flying through space. The joke being that the planet could not be spherical and disc-shaped at the same time. (Was listed as Kepler-2418 in the previous chart).

This candidate planet has an Earth Similarity Index of 0.89, making it one of the most habitable Kepler object of interest. The name suggests that it could be used as a backup in case something happened to our current planet. (Was listed as Kepler-1686 in the previous chart; Kepler-1686 b was proven to be a false positive by NASA in 2015).

A reference to the 2013 meat adulteration scandal, where horsemeat was found in burgers alleging to contain beef. This planet's name suggests that the surface of the entire planet would also contain improperly declared horsemeat.

This name would cause confusion with the Earth's moon, which in English is called The Moon. It is also a poor name choice as 82 Eridani c is not a moon, but a planet.

d

New

Constant Saxophones

May refer to the fact that there are lots of different kinds of saxophones. A Constant Saxophone may only be able to play one note, while several Constant Saxophones tuned to different notes could assemble the tone range of either normal saxophone. Constant Saxophones could also imply that Saxophone music is played constantly, everywhere on the planet. This could get tiresome for the residents of the planet.

Both references to Frank Herbert's Dune book series. The planet Arrakis (informally referred to as 'Dune') is the central planet in the mythology, where the mind-enhancing substance 'spice' comes from. Use of spice enables, among others, supercomputing-like mental computation as well as hyperspace navigation. Having two neighbouring planets with names that are historically used to refer to a single planet would sow further confusion in the already extensive catalog of planet names. This is similarly to Betelgeuse/Beetlejuice (see HR 7722) and the two Uranuses (see Kepler-283).

A novella is a form of prose with length between a short story and a novel. Common examples of novellas are romance literature centering around intense lustful encounters in cheap paperback books, though also 'serious' literature may be in novella form.

Like the other two planets orbiting this star, the "69" in the stars designation has lead to a sex joke: All planets in this comic are "exo-planets", planets not orbiting our sun. Adding a single "s" in front results in immature humor.

On YouTube, "subscribers" (people who get updates on a person's channel) are highly valued, and to "unsubscribe" from anyone is deemed to be offensive. "Unsubscribe" is also the command one sends to Electronic mailing lists to stop receiving said mailing list. In this sense it may imply a desire to no longer be bothered with these silly discussions around planet-names. Like "[email protected]" and "How do I join the IAU", "unsubscribe" is a frequently seen accidental message on the Internet in contexts where it is not going to work as a command.

[Black Hat points with a stick at a slide showing an image of a planet with unknown features marked by questions marks.]

Kepler-452b

Black Hat: NASA has announced the discovery of a (super-)Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of a sun-like star.

Black Hat: I suggest we name this planet "Pluto", both to celebrate the great work by the New Horizons team, and to make the stupid "Is Pluto a planet" debate a little more confusing

While we wait to hear from the IAU,

here's a revised and updated list of

planet name suggestions (see xkcd.com/1253)

New or updated entries in red

[The table is in three separate columns. There is a small arrow pointing at the second column, named "Planet", indicating the planet's name corresponding to the star at the first row. The third column shows the planet name suggestions.]

The IPA character for stress is a vertical line ˈ. Randall uses a slanted line similar to acute accent ´ or prime ′.

There were three errors in the original version of this comic. These were corrected later the same day.

The three errors were:

Waterworld starring Kevin Kostner (Kostner instead of Costner)

Upsilon Andromidae (Andromidae instead of Andromedae)

Formalhaut (Formalhaut instead of Fomalhaut)

Later after the initial release of this comic Randall added a link to this page. It's viewable in the HTML-source or here: https://xkcd.com/1555/info.0.json. The text is: "Full explanation & dissection & transcription available http:\n\nwww.explainxkcd.com\nwiki\nindex.php\n1555".

A Unicode snowman is also referenced in Randall's book What If, where it is keymapped to a laptop.

Randall has also poked fun at the Netherlands in Drain the Oceans, where the Netherlands, no longer worrying about a cataclysmic flood, take over the world, and in Drain the Oceans: Part II, where the Netherlands use the portal to colonize Mars. See the https://what-if.xkcd.com/archive/ for more details.

283b is the phonetic spelling for Uranus (your-a-nus) and 283c is the phonetic spelling for Uranus (your-ay-nus) 141.101.104.77 05:33, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

In table explanation, "'YU-ri-nus'...being the same as how the Greek god is pronounced in English" is misleading: Wikipedia's "Uranus (mythology)" page specifies both pronunciations as options. (And when we studied Greek mythology in high school we did in fact use jʊˈreɪnəs.)108.162.216.101 02:19, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Netherlands

.. I almost feel like that titletext gives enough reason for there to be (some) pages about the What If? series, but ehhhh... Pixali (talk|contribs) 05:02, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Thought about that and Randall's "promise" to use this joke more often: Do we need a "Netherlands" category for comics/articles? Having said that, maybe this was the very last reference to this joke, because of this promise... Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 12:06, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Kostner

Is there a pun I'm missing by spelling Kevin Costner as "Kostner"? 198.41.241.7

I got it - the file's been updated, but I had to go all the way to the image and force a refresh on my browser for it to appear correctly. :P KieferSkunk (talk) 00:34, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Novella

I'm not 100% sure what "Novella" refers to, aside from the dictionary definition of the word (and if that's the case I'm unsure of the context), but in case it's not widely-known on this wiki, I want to suggest the possibility that it's a tribute to the Novella brothers, who are among the co-hosts of the popular science podcast The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. - 108.162.241.175 04:43, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Seems like a cool podcast, sadly I don't have time to listen to 10 years Witt of podcasts. Any specific ones I should listen to and where should I start for new ones? 173.245.55.63 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The podcast is very topical, often talking about current news items. It is OK to start with new ones, and back-fill as desired. Blaisepascal (talk) 18:57, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Considering the sex-themed names Novella it is grouped with. I will assume it is a joke on 60/70's exploitation/B-movies, some of which had names or leadcharacters named something..-ella. In this case the prefix is just particularly confusing ;) 188.114.110.47 08:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I assumed this was a reference to the SGU, perhaps because I was primed by the Phil Plait reference (who has been a guest on that podcast a few times), and because of their enthusiasm for space news. 141.101.99.57 20:04, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

It could also be interpreted in this context as the diminutive form of "nova," like a stellar nova. - 173.245.56.165 15:09, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Somehow I just read this as "a dollar a planet", maybe refering to a donating scheme ("a dollar donated for every planet found" or even more along the lines of "a dollar a day", meaning: donate 1 dollar to save this planet) or a sale advertisement ("just $1 to buy a planet", which is very likely to be a scam as it would not be possible with current technology to visit another planet outside of our solar system) 198.41.242.253 15:15, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Planet of the Apes (disambiguation)

I think the suggestion here is to actually put the "(disambiguation)" in the name of the planet, thereby creating a problem in the wikipedia entry, since there's already a wikipedia page with that title. They would have to create a meta-disambiguation page, which is why this is funny. 141.101.98.235 13:39, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

That's definitely the joke. But Wikipedia is actually already prepared to deal with this. When the Prince and the Revolution cover band "Prince (disambiguation)" tried to add a page for their band, editors pointed out that it should be listed as "Prince (disambiguation) (band)", with that "misnamed for technical reasons" template at the top explaining that the band's proper name is "Prince (disambiguation)", and possibly a disambiguation page at "Prince (disambiguation)" could point to it as well as to "Prince (musician)" and various other things. (But of course the band is completely non-notable, so the page was just deleted anyway). (I may be misremembering the details; it may have been a similarly-named cover band for a similar artist.) So, this would just be "Planet of the Apsa (disambiguation) (exoplanet)". 162.158.255.52 17:17, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Kepler-438b

In the previous comic, Kepler-438 was named Kepler-1686 (which does not seem to exist...) and was updated to the current Kepler-438b. It even is colored red to show the update. 162.158.23.198 16:34, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Hot Mess

Why is Hot Mess an Arrested Development thing? The phrase is in general use, not just limited to viewers of that show. 108.162.237.189 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Air Bud Pluto #9 Reference

A few strips back, in Rulebook, we were debating whether the "9" on the dog's jersey may have been a subtle jab at the Pluto debate. I argued that there was a strong possibility of that, given the timing of that comic immediately after the New Horizons flyby, the strong relationship between dogs and the name Pluto, and Pluto's former status as the 9th planet. There was no way to prove that that was what Randall had in mind (short of him personally confirming it), but I think this strip could lend some credence to it. What do you think? KieferSkunk (talk) 17:50, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

What I think: #1 I don't think just the mention of Pluto is enough to support the relationship between Air Bud and Pluto; #2 read my commentary on 1552: Rulebook. GuiRitter (talk) 23:01, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Definition of Planet

What about the fact that the new definition of planet made by the IAU says it has to be around the sun. None of these would fit the definition of planet then and the answer to "is Pluto a planet" would still be no.Agent0013

(I just added this to the 1253 talk. Adding it here too.) I think Planet With Arms refers to both Hitchhiker's and to Galileo describing Saturn as a 'planet with ears' when he discovered. it. --173.245.54.26 13:12, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

A few more possibilities for you:

"Skydot" - a reference to Carl Sagan's famous "Pale Blue Dot" of Earth.

"Seas of Toothpaste" - possibly referencing the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" with its various peculiar "Seas" (e.g., "Sea of Phrenology", "Sea of Holes")

"Moonchild" is a generic hippy name, and also the title of a 1917 novel by Aleister Crowley and songs by King Crimson and Iron Maiden. The King Crimson song, perhaps importantly, is the fourth song (i.e., "song d") on their debut album.

"Planet With Arms" also follows on directly after "LEGoland" as a pun, as well as referencing Galileo's description of Saturn as a planet with ears.

Planet with arms could also probably be a reference to the 'birds with arms' meme. 108.162.249.169 09:12, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

It's probably not intentional, but Spherical Discworld reminded me of an aspect of the Pratchett novel, Strata (pre-Discworld-series, i.e. very early work, and arguably a bit rough around the edges, but you still might want to peruse it some time). Although I'm not wanting to go into any more detail lest I spoiler the very interesting thing that I'm talking about. 141.101.98.168 21:18, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I am vaguely disappointed that none of the Eridani planets got named "Planet of the Fish Assholes"... -Pennpenn 108.162.250.162 23:46, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Can we talk about how this comic is the fourth time the island Sulawesi was mentioned without any reason? Sulawesi appeared in comic 273 as part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and physically in both Online Communities maps I and II? 108.162.225.133 09:55, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I vote for a Sulawesi category. GuiRitter (talk) 23:01, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Was unicodesnowmanforyou.com made before or after this comic came out? 173.245.54.51 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Tools

It seems you are using noscript, which is stopping our project wonderful ads from working. Explain xkcd uses ads to pay for bandwidth, and we manually approve all our advertisers, and our ads are restricted to unobtrusive images and slow animated GIFs. If you found this site helpful, please consider whitelisting us.